Getting a Drum Beat

The backbone of any sound track is a good drum track. Maybe you like to use them sparingly, or maybe you go all out on the drums, but either way you need drums. The three DAW’s I have covered so far, Audacity, Ardour, and LMMS all have drum integration. I would venture to say that drums in LMMS are easiest to use as there is a drum track where you can click in the drums on certain beats. On Ardour and Audacity you have to copy and paste the drums while also trying to align them, so it can be a little frustrating.

If you want to focus in on the drum track, than you might consider using the Hydrogen Drum Machine. The software is specifically made for making drum tracks and it even has a built in mixer. I actually started off using Hydrogen and when I made the shift to LMMS I found the workflow to be very similar.

Apart from downloading new software for your drum tracks, you do need drum sounds. In LMMS you can find basic drum sounds under the Kicker presets. You could also download something like the Black Pearl Drum-kit and install it like I showed in my LV2 plugin post, and that would work in LMMS or Ardour.

My third alternative would to download recorded drum files. There are a bunch of free sounds and projects on LMMS Sharing Platform, and Freesound also has a bunch of sound files.

Other than that, it’s up to you to make the beat. Something to consider if you are just starting out is downloading a few finished projects off of the LMMS Sharing Platform to see what the beats look like. BPM (Beats Per Minute) settings will make a huge difference in the speed and feeling of the song, so make sure to integrate it if you are trying to imitate a beat or type of song.

VCV Rack

I recently heard about VCV Rack and decided to try it for myself. It’s a modular synthesizer that works on MacOS, Windows, and Linux. For those that are interested in a new synthesizer, or just like being able to see the connections between modules this is a great tool.

From the picture above you can see that it is very clean even with all the ports. I really appreciated the color coding of the “wires” to help keep things tidy and understandable.

Besides it being fun to play with, it was surprisingly easy to install. Something I’ll have to play with in the future is installing plugins. Of the synthesizers I have tried to this point, most didn’t have plugin integration, so it’s a nice functional change for me.

VST Plugins In LMMS?

I have often heard the common stereotype about Linux that it can’t run “good” software, especially when it comes to music DAWs or plugins. I have already shown some decent, free DAWs that run in Linux, but there are also good audio plugins. Other than LV2, LADSPA, GIG, and SF2, it is also possible to run VST plugins! Traditionally VST plugins only work on Windows. I am here to prove that it can be done, and quite easily.

Now I will admit that I started off taking the long route around. I originally used Wine to install the .exe file for the plugin I wanted. That enabled me to launch it, but took forever to get the proper version of Wine and get it running. Maybe it’s just me, but this route seems to be the harder one, besides you cannot use the plugins in any software. You would have to use JACK Audio or something of the like to port the audio through the plugin and back.

I ended up using vestige on LMMS to load the .dll files that came with the .exe files. Apparently there are a lot of VST files that don’t run with LMMS on Linux, but the one that I used worked fine.

At this point I still couldn’t open the plugin in the plugin manager. I was able to do this by putting the .dll file in my VST folder which is decided by the settings in LMMS. After that, other than LMMS running a bit slower it worked fine.

Automation Editor in LMMS

I have often used the automation tracks in LMMS to turn up or down volume, to change plugin effects, and to really do everything.

Now, I have a lot going on here, but lets say that the violin needed to be louder for a bit to carry the beat.

I have created a automation track and expanded it out to fill four bars. It isn’t doing anything for us yet, so lets fix that.

Here is my mixer window, and my violin is set to track 19.

If you drag your volume bar or effect knob to the automation track, it will tie it to change that control. So what does the editor look like?

This is it, and I have already added two dots to raise the volume temporarily. There are three options at the top to make a change on a very choppy, linear, or smooth path. Now, if you wanted to change more than one control with the same automation track, just drag another control to the track. It won’t appear to change, but if you right click on the track it should say 2 Connections at the bottom.

AutoTune vs Vocoding

Most people that listen to music would know what AutoTune is. However, not everybody knows about it’s less music oriented predecessor, the Vocoder. There is a definite difference between those who use auto tune for correcting “off” notes, and those who use it because they like the sound of it. If you like robotic voices, you might like the sound of vocoder plugins.

A vocoder basically mixes your voice with a synthesizer. The benefit being that there is a large selection of sound distorting options.

I installed this auto tune plugin and it worked out of the box, but it had a very minimal effect on the sound even on the fast setting.

I also installed this vocproc plugin and was able to get a robotic sounding result. You can install it on Linux with a simple command: sudo apt-get install vocproc. It automatically popped up in Ardour, but it did take some messing around with, as it bases it’s pitch shifting on a separate MIDI track. A more in depth setup video for vocproc can be found here.